Martin Scorsese, acclaimed director of Taxi Driver and The Wolf of Wall Street (among many notable others), repeatedly lists The Red Shoes as one of his favorite films and greatest influences. In an interview with The Independent, he referred to it as "the movie that plays in my heart," citing his experience seeing the film as a child as foundational to his desire to become a filmmaker. He has noted that he identifies with Lermontov, looking to the darker and more mysterious parts of the creative process, which Lermontov so poignantly represents, as inspiration for his films. He also observes that the lighting and angles of Moira Shearer's close-ups particularly impressed him, and bore a lasting influence on his own work. The use of color to heighten the story's melodrama also influenced the young Scorsese, and similarly intense schemes of color and light are also visible in the director's own work.
When the original negatives for the film began to degrade, Scorsese helmed a fundraising campaign to have the film restored. The high quality of this restoration is credited with improving the vibrant Technicolor tones used in the original film, giving rise to the intense colors that appear throughout modern incarnations of the film, especially the brightness of the titular red shoes.
